ithin the episodic sequence
of Don Quijote's adventures in Part I, Cervantes dedicates chapters
19 and 20, encompassing a single night, to consecutive nocturnal happenings.
These may be considered the first fully nocturnal events narrated in the
protagonist's segunda salida, for although Don Quijote leaves home
at night and the incidents involving Maritornes at the inn occur at night,
chapters 19 and 20 are the first adventures in which our heroes
stand in the midst of a dark and silent world.
Daytime occurrences are the general rule in
Don Quijote, as they probably are, statistically reflecting our species'
diurnal mode of existence, in all of literature. The occasional exception
only strengthens the rule, and the nocturnal context of chapters 19 and 20
may be seen, then, as realistically rounding out the work's normal diurnal
emphasis. Still, the baroque Cervantes is rarely simple in his creative
intentions.
If we ask ourselves what, beyond the presentation
of nocturnity itself, is exceptionally revealed in those two nocturnal chapters,
a very distinct Cervantine goal emerges. It is evident that the differentiating
nocturnity of chapters 19 and 20 is instrumental in the novelist's deviation
from a narrative pattern that the preceding chapters of the work have decidedly
established. That pattern, which has to

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do with the perception of the real world in Don Quijote,
has invariably worked as follows: in the string of diurnal
adventures that precede chapter 19, Don Quijote, moved by his
prescribed madness (the systematic superimposition of the imaginative-literary
upon the real), alters what his senses would appear to dictate
an inn, a windmill, a flock of sheep in order to see castles,
giants and contending chivalric armies. Sancho Panza, on the other hand,
without his master's demented predisposition, supposedly describes what is
actually transmitted by his senses: inns, windmills and flocks of sheep.
This established narrative pattern is, of course,
a valuable literary resource. It very efficiently highlights, by contrast,
Don Quijote's demented alterations of reality, producing, in
the process, no little humor.1 What the indicated
pattern emphatically suggests, by invariable repetition, however, is that
the senses (appearances) uniformly offer a valid representation of the
real, and this is a message that runs counter to the Baroque's
oppositionally dualistic appreciation of Appearance / Reality (Warnke
21-22).2 The Baroque's wary attitude regarding
sensorial appearances, not surprisingly Cartesian, is perhaps
best expressed by Orozco Díaz:

El Barroco pierde la confianza en lo natural
incluso en la experiencia de los sentidos. Recordemos una vez más
la expresión, tan bien repetida más de una vez en nuestro Barroco,
de que ese cielo azul que todos vemos ni es cielo ni es azul (36).
(The Baroque loses confidence in the natural,
even in the experience of the senses. Let us once again recall the expression,
so appropriately repeated more than once in our Baroque, that the blue sky
that we all see is neither sky nor
blue.)3

We believe that Cervantes, keenly aware of
the unacceptable nature of the message that his established narrative pattern
would transmit, decided to set the baroque record straight, as it were, with
his two back-to-back nocturnal adventures. In these, one might
well suggest, nocturnity serves as a conditioned experimental chamber in
which the two most highly developed and regarded of

1 After
the two-chapter break represented by the nocturnal occurrences, this narrative
pattern, so necessary for the contrastive effect noted, will again be employed
by Cervantes, even into Part II.2 For a definition
of the Baroque in terms of a specific rejection of the sensorial as a valid
representation of the real, see Gilman, 22-26.3 The translation
is ours.

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our senses, sight and hearing, are consecutively
tested,4 tested and found, of course, baroquely
wanting.
As already noted, Don Quijote is dementedly
predisposed to the imposition of an imaginary-literary reality
upon the message of his senses. He could hardly be, then, the test subject.
Cervantes's re-examination of sensorial validity, as represented by chapters
19 and 20, must have, as its primary subject, Sancho
Panza,5 whose theretofore direct sensorial
interpretation of the real, as we have indicated, has made such
an experimental presentation imperative for the baroque writer.
In effect, throughout the two chapters under
study, it is not Don Quijote's expected imaginative interpretation of sensorial
appearances that should strike the reader, but the fact that Sancho Panza
fails to offer, in contrast, a sensorially realistic interpretation of the
nocturnally encountered phenomena. As we shall see, Cervantes will have purposely
de-activated his established sensorial litmus test for then real,
Sancho Panza, by experimentally blunting the great squire's theretofore
infallible senses.
With Sancho as the test subject, it becomes
clear why Cervantes humorously organized his experimental chamber as a context
of frightful nocturnity. One need hardly document our species' fearful
predisposition toward darkness. Cervantes makes his understanding of that
universally human trait clear by several times underscoring its immediate
effects even upon the fearless Don Quijote: Pasmóse
Sancho en viéndolas, y don Quijote no las tuvo todas
consigo . . . and . . . para poner
miedo en el corazón de Sancho, y aun en el de su
amo . . . (171-72).
The key baroque lesson involved (the unreliability
of the senses) could only be generally valid, as such, with an experimental
context (nocturnity) that was universally effective in its distortive properties
vis à vis the sensorial. That is to say, a context such
as nocturnity that the reader, any reader, would have empirically
experienced in

4 Cervantes'
chapter-caption to chapter 20, De la jamás vista ni oída
aventura . . .  (I, 178), although containing a comical intent
of its own (Rodriguez-Pérez Espinosa, 39), clearly suggests that the
senses of sight and hearing were foremost in his creative effort in the chapters
under study.5 In a study
of Sancho's joke-tale from a Freudian perspective (chapter 20), Professor
Shipley has noted the central role of the squire in the context here studied:
Chapter 20 of Don Quijote, part I, is Sancho Panza's chapter.
In it Sancho is mentioned fifty-three times, his master but thirty-nine.
The point of the chapter is discovered by attending to Sancho, to what he
says and does, and to the narrator's way of treating him (135).

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its sensorially distortive potential. But, of course, it will be Sancho's
cowardly nature, especially vulnerable to nocturnity's universal effects,
and extreme in its superstitiously fearful reactions to it, that will lend
the entire experiment its intense level of humor.
In so cowardly a nature as Sancho's, fear will
serve to humorously distort the apparitional message of the senses. And,
in effect, Sancho's senses fail him completely in the nocturnal world
experimentally prepared by Cervantes. In chapter 19, the full sight
albeit, by torchlight, but concretely described by the narrator
of the nocturnal procession, only heightens Sancho's previous, fearful
interpretation of fantasmas: Esta extraña visión,
a tales horas y en tal despoblado, bien bastaba para poner miedo en el
corazón de Sancho . . . (I, 172); and, with regard
to sound, in chapter 20, . . . oyeron a deshora otro
estruendo que les aguó el contento del agua, especialmente a Sancho,
que naturalmente era medroso y de poco ánimo (I, 178). As Don
Quijote later indicates to Sancho (I, 188), the latter's peasant familiarity
with fulling-hammers (and, one might add, with nocturnal breezes in trees)
should have identified the mysterious sounds. And so he probably would have,
but in a different context, a context less emotionally distortive of the
sensorial.6
Cervantes's consecutive nocturnal happenings
decisively break the pattern that, within the world of the novelistic
characters,7 had installed Sancho's senses
as the uncontested determiners of the real. The novelist thus
underscores the baroque contention that appearances the offerings,
for the most part, of our senses, with sight and hearing primary among
them are not an unerringly valid reflection of
reality.8

6 In the
discussion of the two protagonists upon hearing the fulling hammers (the
squire trying to dissuade Don Quijote from action by indicating, with a
shepherd's method of nocturnal time-telling, that dawn is just hours away,
Sancho openly admits to the distortive power of fear, his fear: Así
es dijo Sancho ; pero tiene el miedo muchos ojos y vee las cosas
debajo de la tierra, cuanto más encima del
cielo . . . (I, 180). For a full presentation of that
discussion, underscoring Don Quijote's ironical remarks, see Casasayas,
121-22.7 The narrator's
descriptions, which usually confirm Sancho's perceptions, are not in play.
When the baroque Cervantes wants to bring even the narrator's apparitional
descriptions into doubt, he employs the more elaborate truco
in which the narrator's direct description of the visual, in
particular leads to engaño. See Rodriguez-García
Sprackling.8 For the theodical
relation: engaño / desengaño,
evil / good, tied to the Counterreformation ideology
of the period, see Sáez, 107-110.

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111

But not content to merely indicate that baroque
lesson, Cervantes will go, we believe, one playfully baroque step
further:9 he will end up by assaulting the
sensorial depiction of the real via comical paradox.

For, curiously enough, in the midst of the
situation outlined above (I, 20), the good Sancho Panza feels the urge to
defecate. It is all very appropriately Sanchesque, innately comical, and,
therefore, quite capable of distracting from the two chapters' overall focus
on appearances and the inadequate sensorial appreciation / depiction of the
real. The excremental moment's capacity to distract from that
central intent of the two chapters stems from the secondary literary effects
that it evokes and promotes, effects that conforming, as they do, to
the novel's overall literary intent were also sought after by
Cervantes.
Sancho's corporal urge, as noted, immediately
intensifies an inevitable effect of literary references to lower body
functions the work's comical ambience. Clearly, Don Quijote
is intended to be a laughter-generating text, and the reference to Sancho's
very human need serves that overall intent. Sancho Panza's bodily need, in
a frightening context, also reinforces his basic characterization, since
the urge to defecate is universally identified with
fear.10 Sancho's defecation adds another
item, too, to the First Part's growing list of carnivalesque,
lower-body-function inserts,11 through which
Cervantes avails himself of that traditional source of vital
hilarity.12 Finally, Sancho's excremental
act, by its very nature,13 serves Don

9 For
playfulness as an element in Baroque creativity, see, for example, Warnke's
chapter, Art as Play.10 Cervantes'
explanation of Sancho's urge, given the frightening context, is all done
playfully tongue in cheek (En esto parece ser, o que el frío
de la mañana . . . o que Sancho hubiese cenado algunas cosas
lenitivas, o que fuese cosa natural . . ., I, 185), a fact
that is made perfectly clear by Don Quijote's first reaction in accord
with the empirical popular tie between a loosening of the bowels and fear
after realizing what Sancho has done: Paréceme, Sancho, que
tienes mucho miedo (1, 186).11 The previous
such insertion, a vomiting scene that recalls the Lazarillo, has occurred
shortly before, at the end of chapter 18.12 The vital,
resurrecting power of hilarity itself is, of course, a key premise of Bakhtin,
Chapter One.13 There is
little question that Cervantes, in his insistence on Sancho's failed attempt
to avoid the defecating act's accompanying flatulence, purposely lingers
on the excretory incident: . . . le pareció que
no podía mudarse sin hacer estrépito y ruido
. . . (185).

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Quijote's overall parodic intent, for it would be difficult to imagine
any action that would be more demythifyingly polarized to the idyllic goings-on
of the typical romance of chivalry.
These immediate literary effects of Sancho's
excremental exploit, all in perfect consonance with the novel's overall design,
have perhaps somewhat obscured what is equally patent in the text and conforms
best, as well, with what we deem to be the novelist's primary intent in the
two chapters under study: the fact that Sancho's excremental act highlights
the presence and function of smell, another of the senses, albeit a far less
developed and efficient sense.14
It is sheer Cervantine irony, then, that even
the non-sensorial Don Quijote's relatively primitive olfactory sense faithfully
transmits reality (Es que ahora más que nunca hueles y no a
ámbar, and Peor es meneallo, I, 20,
186)15 where even Sancho's superior visual
and auditory senses have so miserably failed. Bearing in mind, first, that
the chapters under study are intended to voice the Baroque's distrust of
sensorial phenomena, and, secondly, that the triumphant sense of smell is
of a lowly quality (its inferior classification underscored by the comical
/excremental manner of its presentation), it seems to us that Cervantes's
intent in Sancho's defecation and Don Quijote's precise olfactory perception
of the same is itself ironical: in a world (an experimental chamber of fearful
darkness) in which the principal senses, emotionally distorted, misinform,
the comically presented fact that the secondary olfactory sense succeeds
is nothing but a paradoxically humorous reminder of the principal senses'
failure.
Chapters 19 and 20 of Part I of Don
Quijote, may well be read, we believe, as the baroque artist's prepared
assault on the validity of appearances, of the senses as reliable means of
perceiving reality. Cervantes wraps up his case, as it were, on a note of
hilarious paradox with a precise rendering of Don Quijote's olfactory acuity.
Sancho Panza's urge to defecate is thus ironically and playfully incorporated
into that general assault.

THE UNIVERSITY OF
NEW MEXICO

14 The
common ordering of the senses when referring to humans (sight, hearing, smell,
taste and touch) reflects the universally accepted hierarchy of their utility
and precision in our species.15 Cervantes
makes it clear that it is not the auditory information, ¿Qué
rumor es ése, Sancho?, that is determining, but as suggested
by the quotes incorporated into our text the information derived from
the sense of smell.